Davison Igbinosun has the talent to be one of college football’s best cornerbacks in 2025, but he must improve drastically in one key area.
As one of Ohio State’s starting cornerbacks since 2023, Igbinosun has played a major role in Ohio State’s pass defense ranking in the top three nationally in each of the past two seasons. He’s also an excellent tackler and perimeter run defender who’s recorded 104 tackles in two years as a Buckeye. But there’s one glaring black mark on his résumé.
Igbinosun gained a reputation for being penalty-prone in 2023, when he led all Ohio State defenders with six penalties. That became an even bigger problem for IGB in 2024, when he led all defenders across the entire FBS with 16 penalties – an average of one per game, and five more for the season than any other player at college football’s highest level.
All but one of those penalties were for either pass interference (12 times) or holding on a pass play (three times), reflecting Igbinosun’s tendency to be grabby in coverage.
Upon making his decision to stay at Ohio State for his senior season rather than enter the 2025 NFL draft, Igbinosun told ESPN he was “coming back to school to be a first-round draft pick.” But he’ll have to cut down on penalties to have any chance of making that happen, as pass interference is an even more damaging penalty in the NFL, where it’s assessed as a spot foul rather than a 15-yard penalty.
“I want to improve on the penalties,” Igbinosun told ESPN when explaining his decision to stay at Ohio State for another year. “I had too many, I want to clean that up.”
Fortunately for Igbinosun, he has the benefit of another year to learn from one of college football’s top secondary coaches, Tim Walton – who knows what it takes to succeed at the highest level as a former NFL secondary coach. And even though it’s been a lingering issue for two years, Walton believes Igbinosun’s penalty issues remain entirely correctable.
“Anything in life is correctable if you put the work in,” Walton said this spring. “You work on it, it’ll improve, and it’ll keep getting better. Football has a lot going on – you got splits, you got body size, you got field position, so you got different calls that puts you in those different positions, so you got to be able to plow all of that and know how it works so when you're at the top of the route, you're not in a bad position that makes you have to reach around.”
While refraining from grabbing opposing receivers is the obvious answer to how Igbinosun can reduce penalties, Walton believes it all starts with having proper footwork.
“Just moving his feet. Just feet drills, just moving his feet so you don't reach at the top,” Walton said when asked what he’s working on with Igbinosun to cut down on penalties. “Your eyes, feet, hands slide at the top so if you get your feet in the right position early in the down, that puts you in a better position at the top of the route so you don't have to reach as much.”
An All-Big Ten honorable mention for each of the last two years, Igbinosun is plenty capable of being an all-conference cornerback if he can fix the one glaring flaw in his game. Per Pro Football Focus, Igbinosun had the best opposing passer rating (69.3) among Ohio State’s starting cornerbacks last year, allowing 32 catches on 60 targets for 368 yards – an average of just 23 yards allowed per game.
Igbinosun led the national champions with nine pass breakups and tied for the team lead with two interceptions. His interception against Penn State was one of the top plays of the entire season as he stole the ball away from Nittany Lions wideout Harrison Wallace III in the corner of the end zone and somehow got possession with a foot still in bounds to keep Penn State from scoring at the end of the first half of Ohio State’s eventual 20-13 win in Happy Valley.
WHAT AN UNREAL INTERCEPTION
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 2, 2024
How did Davison Igbinosun even catch this for @OhioStateFB?! pic.twitter.com/YlvorsDzSE
At 6-foot-2 and 192 pounds, Igbinosun’s combination of size and speed is a major asset to him in both the pass and run game, though Walton says Igbinosun’s height makes proper footwork all the more important.
“He's tall, so we've got to make sure he's sinking his heels at the top of the route, being able to transition out of the breaks, because his body structure’s a little different from some of the other guys,” Walton said. “So we work on those things now so that they become his foundation and it becomes part of his habits, so when we get into the season, they're already part of his makeup.”
That said, Igbinosun has demonstrated he has all the tools to be an elite cornerback. The key to playing consistently great football – and most importantly for Igbinosun, cutting down on penalties – is mastering the fundamentals of the position, and he’s been hard at work with Walton this offseason to try to do that.
“Improve at the top of the route. Improve on the off coverage. Things to work on to make him the player he wants to be next year at this time,” Walton said of what he’s emphasizing with Igbinosun this offseason. “So you've got to work on all this stuff now, and he's done a better job of those things. It's always the little details of things that you want to work on.”
Igbinosun is hungry to not only improve his own game but to help Ohio State chase another championship, knowing he’ll be an even more important part of this year’s defense as one of just three returning starters on that side of the ball alongside safety Caleb Downs and linebacker Sonny Styles.
“I get the opportunity to lead and do it all over again, and have a bigger role as a leader, as more is going to be expected of me as a senior,” Igbinosun told ESPN.
